Harvey - A virtual study buddy for students

Inspiration

From us using home assistants like Alexa and google home we often found that whenever we would ask them to do scholarly tasks such as add things to a note the outcome was often not what we would desire, like it would add the things we want to add to a note to the shopping list instead! So to combat this we developed a program that does exactly whatever a student could desire and does it in a manner that wouldn't produce too many errors for the user!

What it does

Harvey was created to make students lives easier. During Covid19 students are forced to do online learning. Harvey helps by providing students with help while doing online learning. Ask Harvey to search a word in the dictionary, to write down a note, ask it about Covid19 and study with it using our flashcard system!

What we learned

We learnt that with developing a voice prompt application there are many challenges that can be encountered and particularly the voice to text application not being as accurate as we would've hoped, we overcame this hurdle by developing more easier prompt that allowed a clearer distinction to be made from what each prompt is asking to do.

How we built it

we used python and API's to build Harvey. We used Filmora to edit the video.

Challenges we ran into

A major challenge was constantly getting the wrong thing heard by the assistant when we call for it, it would hear the wrong phrases and thus execute wrong tasks. Another challenge we faced was being able to efficiently develop a code within a team being located in 2 completely different parts of the world however we overcame this hurdle by designating to each team member exactly what it was each of us should do.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

we are proud to make such a functional working Harvey in just 25 hours. We are also proud to help make students lives easier and i know i will use this assistant throughout my online learning experience as well.

What's next for Harvey - A study buddy for students

Some of our ideas for if we had more time!

Inclusion of a pomodoro study feature (25 minutes study 5 minutes break sequence tracker)
Further filters applied to the searches – searching strictly from scholarly sources
A friends synchronization of Harvey (especially helpful during covid!) by: a. Motivating friends by sharing information about how much time their friends have studied for b. Encouraging group studying by allowing friends to send messages to each other’s Harvey whilst studying